


Aviary

by Whitnium



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Anguish, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2019-11-09 05:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17995844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitnium/pseuds/Whitnium
Summary: the raven, the dove, the swan, the canary, the vulture, the falconEvents from Myorzo to the Sword Stair that we didn't get to see--and some we did--told through the POV of different characters. Drabble format.Please mind the tags. Chapters that require a CW are labeled.Spoilers for part 2 of the game.





	1. the raven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: None
> 
> The arte described here is bouquet.

**i. corvus**

His hand wanders toward his heart, a movement that was once surreptitious but is becoming impossible to hide as he’s fallen farther into this mess. The need is perpetual, a ravenous desire to feel the pulse of life under his skin. His fingers dance restlessly against a hidden hardness before he drops his arm and sighs bitterly.

The want is insatiable because his heart does not beat, not anymore. The blastia in its place keeps his body animated, but he does not feel truly alive. He wants his heart to break; he wants the tragedy to crush it like a vise, the pain enough to stall his breath. But the blastia is steadfast, unswayed by human emotion. An artificial thing, heavy like lead, the weight chaining him to existence against his will.

He hates this, knows damn well what this is going to do to these kids. What it is going to do to her, probably the one person on this planet that doesn’t deserve it, not even a second of it. He wants to reach into his chest and claw the damn blastia out himself and be done with everything, but his hands proceed with his mission as if possessed. The practiced movements of a life that is not his own.

The bow unfolds with a snap of the wrist. A glowing arrow of rose-colored light levels at its target. Fingers loose the projectile and it sails silently, hits home with certainty.

He curses under his breath as he hears her exhale of surprise, watches her sink to her knees as the arte scatters across her shoulders in a thousand points of pink light. She wavers for a second, attempts to turn to face her assailant, but the magic suddenly steals all locomotion from her and she pitches sideways to the floor.

She can barely focus her gaze as she fights against the strength of his spell but he can see the recognition there, watches the question form sluggishly in her expression as he draws closer. Her chest heaves brokenly and he knows that she knows and he has to steady himself in order not to mirror the tears in her eyes.

“Rav—?” she manages only half of the name before consciousness flees.

He stands over her and begs himself to feel anything but empty, but his body remains as impassive as his utterly useless heart.


	2. the dove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: None

**ii. columba**

There is no cohesion between her body and her mind, an abundance of feeling but an absence of coherent thought, until her brain drags her to consciousness by force. A hot and heavy weight pulses in her limbs and lingers in her brain as she tries to blink it away; she can not identify the source but she knows after an effort that it is magic, the last vestiges of an arte reluctant to relinquish its hold. She drags a shuddering breath and struggles to her knees, looks around a room cast in shadow.

Apprehension gnaws at her chest as she begs herself to remember, and faintly, hesitantly, the memories flicker behind her eyes. The images are diluted in haze: the curve of a bow looming over her, a man without a face fading from sight as darkness eats the world. She reaches for more, but recollection is water through her fingers and frustration forces her eyes out of focus. She shakes her head to clear it and her eyes alight on a smear of color in the corner. A figure stands oblique to her, far into shadow. His profile is shrouded in darkness exactly like her memory and the correlation spurs a sudden energy in her and she struggles to her feet, ignoring a body and mind screaming at her to stop. A tenuous step, a tilt of her head to better see his face that he rebuffs by turning his head.

His movement is one second too late. Recognition draws his name to her, but she hesitates. The contour of his face is somehow different, sharpened angles and hardened lines, but familiarity hangs around him like smoke and she breathes it in, chokes on the acridity as the memory returns to her. His arrow in her back, his arte in her veins, his name on her lips.

“…Raven?”

He recoils in agony, bares his teeth in a scowl, bears the blow in silence.

“Please, Raven. What--”

“I am not Raven.”

Her body reacts where her brain cannot and she shivers at the dissonance in his voice. It is Raven speaking but in a minor chord, the noise so incongruous to the man she knows.

“Raven? Raven, please—” She reaches out to him, her body shaking. “I know this isn’t you. You don’t have to do this, Rav—”

“I will tell you again.” His tone is serrated; the words are a void that rips the light from her world and she stares at him in muted shock.

“I am not Raven.”

His impassivity is a garrote, choking the life from her: standing motionless for far too long, so still he is scarcely breathing. He finally turns toward her but only glances askance at her face. There is no hint of the Raven she knows in his utterly lifeless eyes.

“—Please…” all she can manage, strangled against a weight impossible to quantify.

He turns from her again, infinitesimally slow and completely silent. Even his footsteps make no sound and he moves like a ghost trapped on a different plane. Her fingers linger in the place he once stood, searching for any humanity left behind and finding none.


	3. the swan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Physical violence, but nothing worse than what we see in canon.

**iii. cygnus**

_Bring her to me._

An order obeyed without question six months ago, back when his Commandant didn’t have that megalomaniacal glare in his eyes. Schwann stands beside Estellise with one hand on her arm and nearly presents her to Alexei but the glare in the other man’s eyes is malevolent enough to give him pause. He tightens his grip out of reflex and the hesitation draws the Commandant’s ire.

Alexei’s fist connects with Schwann's jaw, a solid hit that shakes the world and he is forced to one knee. He wheezes for breath, bent double but silent. His grip on the princess’ arm redoubles with the blow but Alexei yanks her away anyway.

 _After all I’ve done for you,_  
_and you still insist on insubordination?_

The commandant punctuates the accusation with a kick to the solar plexus, a harsh clash of metal on metal, and Schwann’s breath leaves him again alongside a ragged cry.

“Alexei! Stop!”

Schwann recoils from an agony not entirely of Alexei’s making; after everything he’s done, still she begs for his absolution. A heart he can never know and will never have, something too pure for his dirtied hands.

He cares for her because of her innocence, her compassion, her light--everything in antithesis of himself. He cares so much it hurts but--

_Schwann_

\--he can’t anymore. The effort to regain his feet is almost insurmountable, mentally and physically, but he struggles upright and squares his shoulders to his keeper, stands at the ready as the years of servitude have taught him.

Estellise looks at him with eyes that shine with too many latent tears; she stifles sob that he can feel in his bones. He defers to his commanding officer with a simple salute and the princess begins to cry in earnest—for him or because of him he does not know. He can’t lower his eyes from her horrified face because he deserves this, deserves to bear every second of her suffering and ten times more.

 _I’m sorry_ is what he wants to say, but the part of him that could say so died a decade ago, is decayed and rotting in the place where his body should be buried. He curses himself for dying and he curses himself for coming back again as this caricature of a person, broken pieces placed haphazardly together. Weakness, parts that grind against each other when he breathes, thoughts that can never coalesce in his head.

_I knew you’d see it my way._

Alexei produces a cluster of apatheia in his free hand, activates their formula with a simple motion of his wrist. Estellise reacts instantly, face frozen in panic as her body goes rigid. The apatheia generate an expanding cage of light and right before it swallows her she reaches out for him and she’s screaming and she looks every bit the child she still is. Schwann can only hope that the churning aura of magic around her will make his heart explode. The sphere hums a terrifying cadence and every crystal glows white. The sudden influx of aer is a knife in Schwann’s chest and he can scarcely breathe; Estellise howls indiscriminate noises as her body radiates a terrifying light.


	4. the canary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Canonical (pre-game) character death is mentioned, descriptions of physical and mental torture, suicidal ideation
> 
> Here we go, it's all downhill from here.

**iv. serinus**  
   
Estellise always dreams about her mother in faint outlines and muted colors, in ephemeral images that fly away when she tries to focus on them. Only a few memories remain unchanged by the weight of years: the flowers in her hair, the kindness in her eyes, the tremble in her voice as she barely says _I’m sorry_ with her last breath while Estellise sobs so hard her ribs might break.  
  
Magic flies wantonly from her hands but the effort is pointless, the results immutable: healing magic cannot undo what death has wrought, no matter how hard an innocent soul cries for it. Her mother’s body turns to light but the brightness is a malicious entity that consumes all reality, ravenous and merciless. Estellise can sense nothing in the abyss but the aer around her; it crawls across her skin like some corporeal thing, sinks its claws into her body and tears her open with a force that rends all thought. The agony steals all her strength to scream but her body shakes from the effort; the very spirit of world trembles with her, echoes her pain in an inhuman voice she can feel but not hear--the planet’s terror personified as a suffocating weight, crushing her from the outside in.  
  
_The insipid poison of this world must be purged._  
  
She knows that her power will destroy the world.  
  
This power that is a part of her, her identity, her purpose.  
  
And she knows that it must destroy her first.  
  
_Never lose that kindness._  
  
Compassion alone cannot save the world.  
  
_It’s okay if I have to die._  
  
An incipient corruption, long hidden in her heart, reaches out and swallows her whole. She knows she has to die, can feel her life fading alongside the planet she is killing; her only regret is that she is alone in this terrifying hell of her own making, where the magic she once used to heal their wounds is destroying them all.  
  
She searches desperately for any sort of purchase against the infinite span of light, a last attempt to escape, but her hand travels forever and never reaches the edge; the harder she pushes the farther it falls away. An apparition appears, framed between her outstretched fingers: her mother, bathed in swirling stars. Estellise can scarcely breathe through the tears as the distance between them grows seemingly infinite yet still she reaches--  
  
Tendrils of a formula wrap around her shoulders and yank her back, snapping her body in twain; the aer razes her mind’s meager defenses, seeks out every fragment of her power and pulls it from her until her vision blurs and she collapses, every connection in her body undone. It takes a terrifying second for her heart to remember how to beat again.  
  
She blinks her eyes back into focus and her mother is gone. Alexei stands in her place, and Estellise's last piece of hope shatters beneath the unyielding strength of his malevolence.  
  
 


	5. the vulture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Physical abuse and mental abuse, extreme violence, Alexei is a total ass

**v. cathartes**  
  
  
Alexei retreats with Estellise to his private wing of the Heracles, to an area where even his First Captain is denied access. Schwann does not know the Commandant’s intentions but he can _feel_ them, even from his position several rooms away: a metallic tinge of magic that pulses like a heartbeat, surges of aer that grip his chest like a vise until he can hardly breathe.  
  
Estellise never stops screaming.  
  
There is a pause every so often; every time Schwann begs for it to be the end but moments later the taste of aer is foul in his throat once more and the pain lances white-hot through his heart. The screams start again and another layer of his defenses flays away. His guilt shreds him to nothing but he remains at his post, closes his eyes every time her hears her _scream his name._  
   
Captor and captive emerge again—hours or years later, Schwann does not know—and Estellise sags lifeless in the crystalline prison, nearly bent backward.  
  
Alexei eyes his First Captain speculatively, motions to the latter’s lack of armor, his dead man's clothes. “Your uniform. We will be at Baction in the morning.”  
  
“Commandant.” Whether he is Raven or Schwann he can never quite meet his commanding officer’s eyes. The cowardice makes him sick. He ignores Alexei’s dismissive nod and adds, desperately: “Do you have to do this to her?”  
  
Alexei’s eyes narrow at his subordinate, the purple light casting his face in a maniacal shadow. The flicker of a smile, a twist of the wrist, and a column of aer plows into Schwann with a ruthless force that lifts him from his feet and throws him back against the wall. The pain of Estellise’s amplified artes, unbearable from a distance, are pure brutality in close quarters. Schwann doubles over instantly, one hand clutching at his blastia—the pain is molten in his heart and and knows this feeling well, these claws of death that dig into his chest, pull him tantalizingly close to the edge only to release their hold at the last possible moment, duty unfulfilled.  
  
“You care so much for this princess, Schwann.” Alexei admires the object of his statement within the sphere; her body lolls as if all her bones are broken. “Why?”  
  
Schwann does not answer because he is incapable: it is a fight to draw air into his lungs, to remain upright. The earlier impact has knocked his hair loose and he hates the transformation, but obeys. He pushes his body away from the wall, wavers for a moment before he settles at parade rest.  
  
“Very well,” Alexei continues with a callous smile. “She is your charge until the morning.”  
  
Alexei closes his hand around the apatheia floating above it. The formula around the cage shatters and the sphere evaporates and Estellise falls like a stone; her legs refuse purchase and she collapses, utterly broken. Schwann reacts out of reflex, reaching for her. Momentum drags her into him and he grits his teeth against the aer still surging through her body--it crackles across his skin, makes him dizzy. Estellise breaths haggardly, presses her hands against his chest to balance herself. Schwann freezes, a curse unspoken on his lips. He screams at himself to push her away but her quiet gasp locks him in place.  
  
“R-Raven…?” A whisper; she can manage no more.  
  
He can’t bring himself to admonish her; the revelation about him, he thinks, is punishment enough. The mental struggle is written plain on her face: the twist of confusion in her expression, eyes wrought with disbelief. Her fingers tremble and she stares down at her hands, watches them rise and fall with his breaths. He knows she can’t feel a thing, not a single beat or pulse in the hard void where his heart should be.  
  
Her touch lingers against his chest a second too long until he snags her wrist and yanks it away, finally galvanized into action. There is more force behind it than is necessary and she flinches in surprise and cries out, though her throat is hoarse from too much screaming and she barely makes a sound.  
  
An apology swells in his mouth but dies there, explodes like a putrid thing, leaves a bitter taste on his tongue.  
  
“Y-Your…” she stammers, searches for the words. The hand entwined with his trembles as she pulls it back; even the subtle action nearly brings her to her knees but she recovers, stares at Schwann with wide, glassy eyes. “What has he done to you?”  
  
Schwann waves a hand dismissively, lets his hair fall across his face as not to have to look at her.  
  
“Let me help you.”  
  
He barks acrid laughter; her philanthropy drags the derisive words from his lungs at last. “I require nothing from you, your Highness,” he mutters with the cadence of a funeral dirge. She places a hand against his chest before the final word has left his lips and is charging the spell in an instant, bathing him in the gentle light of her healing artes.  
  
Schwann tries to reach for her but his hands feel sluggish, unwieldy: “Don’t—!”  
  
The magic coalesces on her hands for only a moment before it shatters into brilliant sparks. Estellise shrieks and her body goes rigid; aer spews from her very pores, red like blood. She falls into Schwann again and her presence renders him useless. She slips from his numbed hands and collapses to the ground and Schwann tries to resist but follows her all the same, his senses deadened.  
  
His eyes focus after an eternity and land on Estellise, curled fetal a short distance away. Her eyes are open but lifeless, her body utterly still, and he fears for a terrifying second that she is dead. Alexei kneels next to her; if the man is concerned for the sanctity of his captive he does not show it. The apatheia hovers beside him, seemingly inert, but the crystals react to her once in close proximity and flicker purple and blue. Estellise gasps herself awake, tendrils of aer sputtering from her chest, before her eyes roll back in their sockets and she falls unconscious again.  
  
Alexei tuts a dismissive sound and rises. He turns to Schwann, nonchalant. “Get up.”  
  
The Commandant owns more than just Schwann’s heart: his brain follows the command despite his body’s protestations. He struggles to his feet, though it feels like the effort will end him.  
  
“Her power is magnificent,” Alexei says, conversationally. He adds, with a glacial chill: “Mind your place, or I might use it on you again.”  
  
Schwann can’t help but wish for it.


	6. the falcon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: canon-typical violence
> 
> a relatively calm filler chapter because minor characters matter too!

**vi. falco**

The sudden appearance of the Heracles in Nordopolica's port--and the Royal Guard disembarking into the city with seemingly no other purpose than to menace the citizenry--forces most of the residents off the streets, indignant, but restrained. The air is charged with tension, potent as electricity; Sodia can feel furious eyes on her in an askance way, like a shadow in her periphery. She dismisses them as no more than a nuisance because her focus is presently elsewhere: two members of the Royal Guard, a swordsman and a lancer, are clustered on the pier not far from her, speaking casually to each other. Her position to their backs affords her ample cover behind a stack of crates and she presses her body close and listens. The Royal Guard are rarely out of formation; to see these two so cavalier catches her by surprise.  
  
“What’s the name of this place again?”

“Yormgen,” the lancer replies.  
  
“Suppose the freak is really gonna show up there?”  
  
An indifferent shrug. “This apatheia nonsense. Something about using that and the princess to make a noise loud enough that even Panterei can’t ignore it.”  
  
Sodia’s hand hovers by her sword, fingertips whispering along the steel and hardened leather. She clandestinely moves closer the men and pushes herself behind another set of crates, continues to listen.  
  
“Using the girl has been a pain in the ass,” the swordsman continues. “With her watchdog Scifo, it’s only a matter of time--”  
  
“The Commandant is taking care of it." The lancer cuts in just as a streak of scarlet rockets into the sky and punctuates his sentence with a blossom of light; a second flare follows quickly after, the signal for the Royal Guard to return to their post on the Heracles.  
  
“That’s it, then,” the swordsman says. “Do you suppose the Commandant killed him?”  
  
“Scifo?" the lancer laughs. "There’s no need. The man’s a big a fool as I’ve ever seen. The Commandant will have him chasing his own shadow in the dark before he ever—“  
  
Sodia's fury is sudden and white-hot: she flings herself in view and draws her sword in time with her scathing declaration: “How _dare_ you!”  
  
Both men whirl with the efficiency of trained soldiers, weapons at the ready before their bodies come to rest.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“You’re Scifo’s-“  
  
Sodia steps toward them, sword on guard. The men exchange glances quickly and their unspoken decision shows in a menacing change of posture. They move as a single unit and overwhelm the space around her, attacking from both sides. The swordsman throws his shoulder against her, upsets her balance. The motion breaks her guard and exposes her flank and the lancer takes advantage of her compromised position, driving his lance into her side. Sodia slashes her own blade against the oncoming weapon in pure desperation and deflects it just enough to save her life; the lance does not impale her as intended but instead gouges a slash across the most vulnerable portion of her armor, slices her entire right side from ribcage to hip. She staggers dangerously but keeps her sword at the ready, the weapon trembling in her suddenly unsteady grip. The lancer finishes his attack abreast of his comrade and both turn on her again—prepared to attack, but pausing to gloat.  
  
Sodia drags her free hand to her side. The wound burns hot and her fingers can not contain the blood; it surges through her fingers in time with her heartbeat.  Darkness claws at the corners of her eyes and a tremor resonates through her chest, settles like ice in her limbs, but she scowls the cry of pain back down her throat and redoubles her grip, challenges the knights with the glare in her eyes.  
  
“The Commandant should have killed you all when he had the chance,” the swordsman laughs as he steps toward her, ready to strike.  
  
“Sodia!”  
  
Flames rush past her face as she hears her name but she does not flinch--Witcher’s aim is truer than any mage she has even known. The projectiles collide with her attacker in rapid succession, each one forcing him backward until he collides with the lancer. The two men struggle but do not fall; ashes swirl around them, buffeted on expanding waves of heat and flame. The swordsman sags against his comrade, struggling for breath not entirely for the smoke.  
  
“Run off to your Captain then,” the lancer snarls as he deflects the residual magic away with the weapon in his hand. He steps backwards, dragging the half-conscious swordsman with him in his other arm.  “You’re already too late.”  
  
Sodia tries a step toward them but the strength is gone from her trembling legs and she sinks to one knee, digs her sword into the ground for balance. She hisses a curse but it goes unheard; the swordsman recovers from his stupor at last and both knights are on the retreat. Another volley of fireballs fly over her head but explode in empty air.

Witcher is suddenly beside her. “Are you alright—?” he stalls as he notices her wound and the proliferation of blood, smooth and shining and spread in a jagged pattern around her like broken glass.

Sodia deflects the question and drags herself to her feet; in reality she should be howling in pain but the effort of standing takes all her concentration. She curls one hand against the wound, sheathes her sword with the other.

“We have to find the Captain."  
  
She manages one tenuous step and concentrates on the Heracles and its menacing shadow; she realizes before too long that darkness is creeping into the corners of her vision again and she grits her teeth, forces herself to take one more step and then another, afraid to pause at all lest her resolve leave her along with her consciousness.


End file.
